


xxxi. today's special: torture

by tempestaurora



Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [31]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Murder, Patricide, Torture, Violence, Whump, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27314080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: Reginald outlines the ways in which he pushes each Umbrella Academy student to their limits, and then the Umbrella Academy students get their revenge.
Relationships: Allison & Ben & Diego & Number Five | The Boy & Klaus & Luther & Vanya
Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930186
Comments: 27
Kudos: 166





	xxxi. today's special: torture

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Experiment | Left For Dead
> 
> ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh read the tags folks this is going exactly where i promised it eventually would

It was incredibly important when it came to maintaining control that the children considered each other as threats; that their relationships with each other be muddied with competition to outright dislike. Only this way, at each other’s throats with perceived knives at their backs, would they strive for greatness and Reginald’s approval. Only this way, he believed, they would save the world.

This control was vital, particularly when it came to individual training, when it came to _secrets._ Should the other children discover their siblings in jeopardy, perhaps they would shirk their responsibility to the world to come to each other’s aid – and Reginald didn’t want that. So he let the tension grow between them, the distrust in one another, and when he took them for their individual training, they never spoke a word of it to the others. Just let them be jealous for the one-on-one time with their “father”, the increased attention, and never divulged whatever horrors they had witnessed the night before.

Reginald designed detailed training plans for his students.

They went like this:

0.01

Number One spent entire afternoons running until he vomited, lifting weights or cars or scrap metal until he collapsed, completing drills or sparring his siblings until he couldn’t move anymore. His powers of strength and invulnerability grew with him, year by year, until he could run faster, lift heavier, fight longer. During spars, he would regularly tire out after fighting most of his siblings – particularly after extensive dodging of projectiles thrown by Number Two, or wrangling the giant tentacles of Number Six.

He was soft, Number One, though Reginald did his best to harden him. He was too sensitive to effectively lead, and too hesitant to be trusted entirely. However, Number One considered his title sacred, and that was vital to containing him.

0.02

Number Two’s ability of trajectory manipulation was easily trained. Though Reginald trialled him with many weapons, and ensured his abilities in all were up to scratch, the boy preferred knives, and Reginald allowed him this one choice, so long as he mastered them. Number Two regularly needed an increased challenge from his static targets, and at that point Reginald would involve his other siblings for target practice.

Number Two would be worthless if he couldn’t hit moving targets.

His other ability, though with limited uses, took longer to hone. He spent long nights, and even longer days, in a tank of water deep beneath the mansion. If he drowned, well that was on him; Number Two didn’t need to breathe, and so his doing so was clearly just to shirk his training.

If Reginald were to consider one of the students a _rebel,_ he might hold Number Two up for the role – if only because his bad attitude was cultivated over two decades, and his irrational anger was second-to-none inside the house. However, he desired too much to be Number One to rebel entirely; the number system held purpose to Reginald, beyond avoiding naming the children and giving them identities – it was precisely for this: for Number Two to desperately strive to be Number One, and in his consistent failure, to develop an intense resentment for his brother that would keep him from ever choosing Number One over the fate of the world.

0.03

Number Three spoke until her voice was hoarse. Her ability was more far-reaching than she understood, and Reginald knew that the only way to ensure she eventually reached those lofty heights would be complete mastery of the basics.

She was never, _ever_ to rumour him – but the other students were fair game.

She rumoured them often, to complete simple tasks, to complete more difficult ones, to risk their lives, feel specific emotions, hurt one another. She rumoured Number Seven to walk off the rooftop and all students bar one not to catch her. She rumoured Number Six to attempt dangerous things with his eldritch horror, and Number Five to not leap out of the way of Number Two’s knife.

Perhaps eventually she would understand her power’s reach; the ability to change reality. If Reginald trained her hard enough, she might become powerful enough to rumour dragons into existence, or erase entire alien races from the universe.

The power of manipulation easily handed her selfishness. The other students didn’t like her because they couldn’t trust her. But for Reginald, she was a gift; if he ever lost control of the other students, his control over Number Three would ensure they would all step back in line.

0.04

Number Four was the disappointment. The abilities of his other students were easily weaponizable, but with Number Four’s insistence not to learn, it became increasingly difficult to guide him towards his full potential.

Reginald trained him by forcing him to move past his irrational fear of ghosts. Number Four could see through the veil and see the dead that walked among them – to be afraid of his power was to be afraid of himself, and wholly useless to the goal at hand. So Reginald took him on trips to the mausoleum and locked him inside at night. He didn’t stay to listen to the boy’s needless cries – how would he ever unlock his abilities if he couldn’t stand to be in the same room as something undead?

Reginald believed that, with time, Number Four would master summoning and dispelling ghosts, as well as potentially unlocking abilities of possession, or sustaining them in tangible forms. Those abilities could be very useful for their doomsday preparations, however Number Four was insolent and weak.

Although Number Four managed to force a divide between himself and the other students on his own, he did it through turning to substances, limiting his abilities and rendering himself useless.

Reginald studied power transference for several years in the early 2000s, but nothing came of it. He was just plagued with a student who wasted his gifts.

0.05

If Reginald was to deem one of the students as most like him, it would be Number Five, who was intelligent and quick-witted. Unfortunately, he was also stubborn and unable to admit when he was wrong; qualities Reginald despised in the child.

Number Five trained ceaselessly. His ability for spacial jumps needed to be stretched regularly. He could not jump a metre before he could jump a foot, although Number Five insisted on trying and therefore tiring himself out needlessly. He created a divide between himself and his other siblings just like Number Four – but instead of substance abuse, Number Five considered himself smarter, and therefore _better_ , than his siblings, and stayed away from them off his own accord.

Reginald planned, one day, to introduce time travel into Number Five’s studies. However, time travel needed to take into account not just the distance in _time,_ but the distance in _space_ when making the jump. The Earth revolves around the sun at thirty kilometres per second; it was not just a matter of choosing the right time to jump to, but needing to choose the right _place,_ or else Number Five might end up in the vacuum of space.

Number Five’s inability to understand when he was wrong and disobedience towards Reginald was the reason why he vanished, Reginald was quite sure.

0.06

Number Six was a special case. His chest held a portal to another dimension, from which an eldritch nightmare of dark, writhing tentacles entered this reality. Number Six’s control of the tentacles improved with age, but only after days of intense drills and lessons, in which he was taught to summon them at will and dispel them after.

His softness was a problem, so Reginald trained that out of him, too. As a child, he always asked Grace and Pogo for a rabbit. After Reginald introduced one into his training, he never asked again.

Though Reginald did not have a clear plan on how to keep him under his thumb, as Number Six was liked by all his siblings, he did not have to worry about it forever.

It was a shame to lose the most powerful student remaining in the Umbrella Academy. He would’ve much preferred one of the others taking Number Six’s place.

0.07

Number Seven was-------------------------- _NOT ON YOUR FUCKING LIFE, ASSHOLE_

Vanya Hargreeves burned her father’s book on her seventeenth birthday, five months and six days after Ben’s death. She turned it into ash and threw the pills in after, something enraged and burning in her eyes.

Beside her, Allison glowered at the fire, and Luther placed his hand on her shoulder. Across the flames, Diego and Klaus stared, their faces contorted into something ugly.

Their father raised students, superheroes.

They made themselves into monsters. It was kind of freeing, in the end.

Vanya and her siblings moved back inside, where everything was deathly silent.

Diego had been one foot out the door when Klaus found the book. Allison had been ready to vanish into thin air when he corralled them into one room and let them read it.

The mysterious red notebook of one Sir Reginald Hargreeves.

Vanya always wondered what he was scribbling in there, and now she knew.

“Oh, this is going to stain,” Mom said from the entertaining room, and Vanya followed the voice. She was stood over the rug, once a yellow-beige, now deep red. The same colour was splattered over the furniture, the walls, the paintings. Five’s face was now dappled with red.

“We’ll throw it out, Mom,” Diego said. “It’s okay; I never really liked that rug anyway.”

Mom nodded, though she seemed to sigh over the loss of the rug.

“Is Pogo still in his room?” Luther asked. They were all pointedly not looking at the carnage.

“Rumoured him to stay for another two hours, twenty-four minutes,” Allison replied, checking her watch. They were a deadly efficient machine when they wanted to be. Vanya always knew that the common cause of the apocalypse was supposed to bring them together, but it turned out to be something else entirely.

It turned out to be an unrelenting hatred of their father.

Even Luther, after reading the pages of detailed criticisms about his sensitivity, his weakness, got on board.

“We’ll have to clean this up, you know,” Luther said now, gesturing but not… not _looking._

“Isn’t that what Mom’s doing?” Klaus asked. He looked like he was going to flop onto one of the sofas, and then thought better of it.

“We’re not leaving this all to Mom,” Diego retorted. “This is our mess. We did… that.”

“Is that some _regret_ I hear in your voice?” Allison questioned, and Diego rolled his eyes.

“If you don’t second guess this kind of thing, you’re more heartless than I thought.”

“This isn’t helping,” Vanya interrupted, as Allison opened her mouth to no doubt rumour him into punching himself in the face. Again. “We all did this, we all have to live with it.”

The room was quiet for a moment, because, well—maybe Vanya did more of it than the rest of them.

“We’re murderers, you know,” Luther said.

“We were _always_ murderers,” Diego replied. “This is nothing new.”

“Except we might not get away with it this time,” Klaus pointed out.

They all stared at each other, then seemed to come to a decision.

“We’ll erase the video tapes,” Luther said, at the same time as Vanya’s: “We’ll have to check Mom’s programming.”

“Pogo will need to be shut up,” Diego announced, and Allison nodded firmly.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t talk,” she said. “And if it gets out—”

“You’ll keep us safe?” Vanya asked.

Allison’s face softened for half a beat. “I’ll rumour the whole goddamn Supreme Court if that’s what it takes. We should get him down, first.”

“Could bury him in the mausoleum,” Klaus said, and Vanya could’ve sworn she saw some expression of sick justice on his face. “It’s on private property, no one would find him.”

“Sir Reginald Hargreeves, eccentric billionaire, disappears,” Diego said, nodding approvingly. “Easy to buy.”

“We’ll get rid of some of his clothes and possessions,” Luther said. He shrugged at Vanya’s questioning look. “He wouldn’t disappear without his monocle.”

Together then, they looked up at the stag head hung high on the wall, where its antlers protruded in two, bloody spikes through Reginald Hargreeve’s chest. Vanya thought he was probably dead long before he ended up there. Vanya thought he was dead when they were only half way through the violent rampage they’d put him through; his entire body was destroyed and sickeningly red.

Vanya had never considered herself a violent person; she used to cry when Klaus burnt ants in the courtyard.

But there was something different today. There was something different about being violent towards _him._

And then something different entirely, when they did it as a family.

The five remaining Umbrella Academy students lined up and stared up at their father’s corpse, hanging from the wall.

“Good fucking riddance,” Diego said.

Vanya couldn’t agree more.

**Author's Note:**

> i am THRILLED to be done with this month
> 
> this fic is not anything how i imagined it would be and it's possibly because it's 10pm and i'm fucking tired and i didn't really sleep last night and had an intensive 7 hour class day (on a SATURDAY) which involved doing three hours of writing sprints so this is what you get lmao
> 
> i've always dreamt of reading a fic in which the siblings violently murder reginald and i thought i might write it,,,, but then i realised that would take a long time and a lot of brainpower so this is what you get instead
> 
> thank u to everyone who came on this month long torture extravaganza with me, suggested prompts and left comments - u guys are the real mvps. if i say i'll do whumptober next year, remind me not to. i am a fool who forgot how long and difficult it is and how time and energy consuming writing 80,000 words is
> 
> however if u enjoyed this series, good for u, happy for u, thanks for reading, see you whenever


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